Studies Find Genetic Signature of Native Australians In the Americas

Applehu Akbar writes: Two new research papers claim to have found an Australo-Melanesian DNA signal in the genetic makeup of Native Americans, dating to about the time of the last glacial maximum. This may move the speculation around the Clovis people and Kennewick man to an entirely new level. Let's hope that it at least shakes loose some more funding for North American archaeology. Ars reports: "The exact process by which humanity introduced itself to the Americas has always been controversial. While there's general agreement on the most important migration—across the Bering land bridge at the end of the last ice age—there's a lot of arguing over the details. Now, two new papers clarify some of the bigger picture but also introduce a new wrinkle: there's DNA from the distant Pacific floating around in the genomes of Native Americans. And the two groups disagree about how it got there."

Comments

Why should this be funded?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, it's interesting that American ancestors included native Australians. The summary indicates a desire for more funding to be allocated to such research. I'm failing to understand why this work is worth funding and how it affects us today. We face a lot of dire problems including food and water shortages, climate change, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and deadly viruses like Ebola. Even projects like exploring space result in new technology being developed that eventually makes its way into our lives. I just don't see any of those benefits from throwing more funding at researching our ancestry. Why should this work be funded? Most proposals to government agencies don't get funded because the money is just so scarce. Why should something like this be funded, quite possibly at the expense of other research?

Re:Why should this be funded?

[Applehu Akbar]

Because archaeology is not a high-cost science, we could do a lot of basic research for not much money. It just takes a focusing of interest, raised by questions like this one. My local area (rural northern Arizona) contains several hundred ruin sites, both cliff dwellings and pit houses, representing a rich culture that in approximately 1200 simply vanished. No one really knows why. It established relations sufficiently distant that red macaw feathers have been found among their trade goods. We need to do more digging.

Drifters

[Tablizer]

It must have been fairly common that fishermen/fisherwomen in small boats occasionally got lost or caught in a storm, and eventually ended up in the Americas. They could keep themselves alive for such a long journey by fishing and capturing rain, with a little luck.

Those who settled in Australia were probably relatively skilled at boating already, or else they wouldn't have ended up in Australia. Thus, it could be the same group & niche at work in both continents.

Re:Drifters

[Tablizer]

around 80+ people required to start a colony...

The existing evidence is only of DNA signatures; it says nothing about settlements or being first. A lone person who arrives into an existing population can spread their DNA that way.

Re:Drifters

[cusco]

There has never been a land connection to Australia since the continent broke off from Africa shortly after the KT Event, which is why all the mammals were marsupials. The closest islands in the South Asian Archipelago (which themselves have never been reachable by land) could barely see mountain peaks in Australia on a clear day. The only way the Aborigines could have arrived was by boat or raft.

BTW, dingos arrived only about 4000-6000 years ago, the original immigrants appear to have arrived well before dogs and humans began living together.

Polynesians on Easter Island

[riverat1]

We know there were Polynesians on Easter Island which is closer to South America than it is to Australia. Maybe some of them made it to South America long ago.